New Names for Food

On Facebook a friend just posted a picture of "brownies." His caption suggested that we come up with a new name for them, perhaps "A pretension chew." Why? Because these brownies had a sign advertising the following: "Gluten Free * Vegan * Cholesterol Free" then in smaller print "Wheat Free * Egg Free * Dairy Free * Nut Free" And this was called a "Chocolate Chunk Brownie." Not sure how, since most ingredients I know of in chocolate chunk brownies are eliminated there.

That advertising is clearly redundant. Gluten free means there will be no wheat, and Vegan means there will be no eggs, or diary. And I don't want to call it a pretension chew, because I know that as trendy as this may be there also could be good reasons for it. Some people do have serious allergies or reactions to the common ingredients in brownies, and it would be nice for them to have a tasty dessert. But do we have to call it a brownie?

I wonder about this when I see "alternative food" products. Veggie burgers; tofurkey; vegan bacon; vegan cheese; soy milk. Some of those, I can handle. Milk, while normally dairy, is a term used for many things that are not dairy; take coconut milk, for instance. But vegan bacon? This is a violation of nature: bacon is pork, which is not vegan! How can it be vegan bacon?? And while we eat some bean burgers that I absolutely love, they represent burgers only in the manner of how I eat them, namely with a bun and certain combinations of condiments. But they do little to solve my hankering for a burger, since there is no beef in them.

Some "food alternatives" I love. But since I still will eat the the things they are trying to replace, I do not see the point in trying to trick my mind into thinking they are something which they are not. Can we come up with new names for them? Can brownies which have none of the traditional ingredients please be called something else?

Good Unhealthy Food

Today Luta and I were out doing doctors appointments, so we took the day off to handle the stress. In between appointments we went to lunch at a restaurant we had not tried before: Wild Eggs. Mostly breakfast food, but also with sandwiches and alcoholic drinks! Kind of interesting to walk into a place that give the impression of being a diner, mostly serves breakfast/brunch/lunch food, and have a drink menu put down that includes blended drinks and spiked coffee! The food was awesome. So many good choices on the menu, and when we got ours I concluded that the ingredients must be awesome. The mushrooms had a strong flavor, which is rare with store mushrooms or anything out of a can! The food was excellent.

While eating it, I realized that I was also fairly certain that the food was unhealthy! The "Everything Muffin" tasted incredibly fluffy and buttery, similar to a dinner roll only much better. Luta's pancakes (a new item that is not on the online menu) had a similar light buttery taste to them, and I'm sure the toppings were loaded up with sugar (lemon, raspberry, and sugar. How can you go wrong??). Of course, all of that added to how awesome the food is, so please realize I am not complaining in the slightest.

However I am also saying that eating good food does not mean eating healthy! The two do not have to be synonymous. When people see what I eat (often what might be termed local, or organic, or slow, food) they conclude that I must be eating healthy, because of the type of food I am choosing to eat. To a degree, they are right: generally low sodium and low sugar, and we don't use a ton of fat either. And we try to avoid preservatives and eat fresh ingredients. But it is wrong to conclude that I never eat desserts, or that I eat in a healthy way. I have no idea where the ingredients came from before they turned into my food at Wild Eggs, but even if they are local and organic and seasonal, I really don't want to know how many calories were in our meals because I'm sure it is too much! Would that stop me from going back there? Not in the slightest.

I try to be healthy. But "good food" is only the start. Eating that food in a good way is the next step.

Energy Deprived

Recently I drastically cut back on my coffee intake. My daily caffeinated drink input now consists of a large cup of tea in the morning, at most. I did suffer the withdrawal headaches, and felt tired for a while. But now I’ve found that even though I do feel tired, I also have an easier time pulling through it and not yawning and being on the verge of falling asleep all the time. It seems, while tired, I have more energy.

It got me thinking about the “5 Hour Energy” shot drinks (which I think generally taste rather unpleasant). They are mostly caffeine and B vitamins, so they supposedly give the boost of energy drinks without all the volume and sugar. Nice, small, low calorie thing. The advertisements like to use the slogan “What is your 2:30 feeling like?” I guess that’s when most people must crash, though I think I cash more around “Right after lunch.” One actors responds “My whole day is a 2:30 feeling.”

Now, I know that sleep can be hard to get. I have been wanting to get more sleep for a long time now, and it has not happened. And some jobs and lifestyles, like being on call at a hospital, certainly make even the best of plans fall apart. But more, or better, sleep certainly goes a long way towards giving me more energy. So does exercise. And I don’t feel jittery or buzzed or caffeinated or suffer headaches if I get off the schedule. But hey, that takes work! Why work when you can pound energy shots?

I found The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, a great new fantasy novel. And I have started reading it to Luta at night. This will be a long endeavor, but it has also gotten us to bed earlier. After all, waiting until 11pm to read a book just wouldn’t work well, as we’d be too ready to pass out. So we’ve been getting to bed earlier, and actually unwinding a bit before attempting to meet with sleep. This has shown us both how tired and sleep deprived we actually are, but we have also felt more energized during the day. Works much better than a blast of chemical energy, I think.

Movie: Inception

This discussion is not intended to be a detailed review of the movie, but it is a discussion of themes and events in the movie. So I expect it to be a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie. If this is a concern for you, I suggest you stop reading here.

I finally saw Inception! It was one of the few movies I really wanted to see this summer, but we never made it. A cheap second-run theater in town had it, so Luta and I went last weekend and finally saw it. The biggest frustration were the people talking to the movie, or in one case about their phone that went off during the movie. But the movie itself was awesome. Totally love it! It’s not as twisty and shocking as some other Christopher Nolan films (like Memento or The Prestige), but I still found it to be challenging. Once again Nolan raises questions of reality, and how do we know what is real? And the whole exploration of dreams and how things impact our dreams, and how we can be in a dream and only kinda know it… Well, I loved it.

But there was an element of the film that I had seen nowhere in trailers. The trailers mention dreams, and stealing secrets, but that’s not what inception is. Stealing an idea is extraction; inception is planting an idea in someone’s mind. Which of course can’t be done, so of course the “hero” of the film claims it can be. So the whole movie is about planting an idea, not stealing one. And the idea hinges upon what I believe to be a key human drive: the desire for reconciliation. Their target has a rough relationship with his father, and so in order to convince the target to break up the company upon his father's death, they plant the idea that his father wanted him to split up the empire so that he could have a chance to build his own. The target tells us that the last word he heard his father say was "disappointed." He mourns his father, believing that despite all he has done his father was disappointed in him. However by the end of the dream layers, his subconscious alters that to being "Dad was disappointed that I tried to be like him, rather than being my own person. Dad was disappointed that I felt forced to be like him, so he wants me to have the chance to succeed and be my own person and not live under his shadow." It is a very powerful moment, when he is reconciled to his father. And as he comes back up the dream layers it sticks in his subconscious.

The desire to reconcile is indeed strong. Not strong enough to convince everyone to do it, but I do suspect that on some level that's what all people want. This should not come as a surprise to Christians. After all, the main thrust of the Bible is that God desired reconciliation with humanity so much, that God was willing to sacrifice God's only Son to make reconciliation possible. It should therefore come as no surprise that we, as God's creation made in God's image, desire reconciliation as well.

Election Day Nostalgia

We went and voted today! When we lived in Wilmore, we voted in the fire station, so we were in a big open garage and voted on nice, modern, electronic machines. Here we were in the fellowship hall of a church, and had to bubble in the sheets like we were doing Scantron tests. And like with Scantron’s, there was the risk of error! At least the ballot reader machine caught one, so it could be re-done… But that’s someone else’s story.

While I was waiting I saw that some of the voters were women, with small children in tow. And I remember that when I was a little kid Mom took me to the voting booth once! Instead of tiny tables with tall walls, I recall her having a booth with a curtain. And I didn’t really know what was going on, but she said she’d only be a minute. And I remember looking around, like these kids were, wondering what this was all about!

Now I get to vote, and I still wonder what it’s all about!

If you’re in the USA, I hope you had a good Election Day.